In Monday's edition of Slate Christopher Hitchens asks, "When will dictators learn not to treat their people like fools?"
He identifies the way dictators always end up insulting the dignity of those they rule as a common factor in their eventual downfall.
People do not like to be treated like fools, or backward infants, or extras in some parade. There is a natural and inborn resistance to such tutelage, for the simple-enough reasons that young people want to be regarded as adults, and parents can't bear to be humiliated in front of their children.....Nicolae Ceausescu wrote his own death warrant on the day in December 1989 when he decided to summon the people of Bucharest for just one more compulsory rally where they would have to stand, screaming with inner boredom, and clap their hands to order while he spoke for as long as he liked.
It struck me that it was a feeling of personal insult that led me to leave the organisation. It was not their errors that I found most difficult but the way they treated us like idiots, the constant infantalising that I could bear no longer.
How gratifying it is that all such regimes go on making the same obvious mistakes. None of them ever seems to master a few simple survival techniques: .... don't try to shut down social media: It will instantly alert even the most somnolent citizen to the fact that you are losing, or have lost, your grip.